


The Devil You Know

by linguamortua



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Bad Decisions, Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, F/M, Past Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 04:18:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17237276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: ‘You’ve hurt me before.’‘Never meant to.’‘Make it up to me,’ Karen said.‘Fuck,’ Frank cursed. He wet his lips with his tongue. ‘Could make it up to you in a nicer way.’‘But you’re not a nice man.’





	The Devil You Know

**Author's Note:**

> **This is consensual, but there's a lot of trauma and violence baked into it. You might want to decide now if that's right for you!**
> 
> I've thought a lot over the years about Mac McClelland's (highly triggering) writing about how consensual rough sex helped her deal with the PTSD she experienced after reporting from war zones. It pops up sideways in a ton of the consensual sex scenes I write. With Karen, I wanted to address it head-on. She's a woman who's experienced an unspeakable amount of trauma in between the events of Daredevil and the Punisher, and I don't think her off-the-charts sexual tension with Frank Castle, Professional Revenge-Murderer, is a coincidence! I super-love their off-the-charts sexual tension, of course, and after _the elevator scene_ I knew I had to write them together. But it took a while to figure out that this was how I wanted it to be.
> 
> I just want her to be happy, you know. And this felt like a way that she could be authentically happy, even if that doesn't look healthy or smart.

On a Tuesday night after work, as they lay prosaically in her bed like regular people, Karen took hold of Frank’s right hand in both of hers. His big, rough paw, with calluses on the top of his trigger finger and down in the web of his thumb. She pushed both of her own thumbs into the muscles of his palm and slid them up towards his fingers. Frank made a wordless rumble. He had his eyes closed. One was still a little dark with bruising. It wasn’t hard to tell that he was tired; it had taken them a whole twenty minutes to get as far as the bedroom. Only the coffee was keeping him awake. 

It was fully dark outside, and only her bedside lamp was on, but pointed down at the floor. Karen was tired herself. She might not see Frank again for days or weeks or months, though, so she stretched and jammed her cold foot into his calf. They were already naked, damn it; she knew what she wanted.

‘Hey.’

‘Sorry!’ she said, smiling entirely dishonestly at his profile. He cracked open his eyes to look at her, not fooled. She interlaced her fingers with his, and then unlaced them. ‘You have nice hands.’ 

Frank grunted. ‘Nothing about me is nice.’

‘God, you’re such a guy. Fine, you have strong hands.’ That sentence begged to be unpacked. They very carefully stepped around certain topics, until those topics became terrifying reality. When you got right down to it, they really didn't know each other all that well. So instead, she laid his hand down on her heart, so he could feel it beating. 

Frank didn’t answer. She kissed his knuckles. Every time she saw him he was coming down, reorienting himself after bloodlust. He still smelled slightly burnt, and although he had washed his hands and face there were dark traces on his skin. The mattress (double, old) was sagging under him and he was letting himself sink into it. His breathing was uncannily regular, inhalations and exhalations both unusually long. So she let him lie there and breathe, and remember how to be a regular person for a while. 

He needed that. What Karen herself needed, she wasn’t sure. Harder to draw a line between the disparate parts of her own life. That everything frightening about Frank was also erotic to her was something that she had carefully not brought up. 

As he lay there with eyes closed, Karen looked at his face. His broken brawler’s nose. The long sweep of his lashes. His mouth, absurdly, incongruously beautiful. More so now that she knew how it tasted. The first time had knocked her sideways. All of her complicated emotions about Frank, who he was, what he did, washed away as they stood by the edge of river and he leaned in to kiss her for the first time. Karen sighed and Frank looked at her. He didn’t need to ask the question.

‘Nothing’s wrong.’ ‘Nothing’ was a much easier answer than trying to explain the delicious, bittersweet memory of seeing him again after the gunpowdered terror-haze of the hotel. Seeing him limp towards her with his cap low over his face after the agony of pulling himself out of the elevator with a dislocated shoulder. It was even better when she replayed it with him lying next to her. 

‘Okay.’ Frank nudged his foot against her ankle bone. She looked him over.

Now that her eyes had adjusted to the low light, she could see a bruise up his elbow. Two dark dots where his own bone had ruptured blood vessels in his skin from the inside.

‘What happened?’ she asked, touching it.

‘Some guy’s skull,’ Frank said shortly.

‘Your whole body is a weapon,’ Karen said, considering him. 

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you ever choke people to death?’

‘People?’

‘Bad guys.’

Frank propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her. His face was screwed up. ‘“Do I ever choke bad guys to death?” Jesus, Karen, what kind of question is that?’ Karen didn’t look into his eyes. She touched each of her fingertips to his, one after the other.

‘I just want to know, is all.’

‘I don’t want you thinking about that shit.’

‘I think about it all the time anyway.’ Very slowly, she brought her gaze up to meet his. He didn’t resist at all as she rested his hand high up on her sternum, so that his thumb and index finger ran along her collarbones. She let her head fall back against the pillow. Frank’s thumb twitched against her skin. He had broken their gaze first and now he was looking at his hand right up near her throat. Wanting to make his mouth tremble in a particular way, Karen let her hands fall by her sides, palms up. She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘How many people have you choked to death, Frank Castle?’

His mouth trembled. Karen felt a hot rush of power.

‘You don't know what you're asking.’

‘Okay,’ Karen said to him, still speaking so quietly that he had to lie very still to hear her. ‘Then kiss me.’

Frank did. He liked to kiss, almost more than anything else. He didn’t move his hand from her chest, but his other hand came over the pillow to cradle her head. Karen made her mouth very soft, and he mirrored it. He tasted like coffee, and the slug of whiskey she’d added to it. _Easy does it_ , she thought to herself. He was almost as stubborn as she was. Almost. He came up for air and Karen swallowed so that her throat moved under his fingertips. They lay for a moment, lips almost touching. Karen touched a long scar on his ribs with the back of her hand. It was in that raw, red stage of almost-healed, where it looked as though it might split open again if ill-used. He had a lot of those.

‘You’re coming apart at the seams.’

‘Rode hard and put away wet,’ said Frank. He kissed her again, leaning over her. He was so warm. Karen was struggling to keep her breathing even. Damn his perceptiveness. It would be easier if he was less attuned to other people’s bodies. Their levels of exertion and arousal; their physical space, their threat level.

Not that she liked things easy with Frank. She didn’t know what an easy life looked like any more, so this was fine—better than fine. Maybe it was ill-advised. But it gave her something she could really _feel_.

After they had kissed at the river she had watched him walk away and promised herself she’d be sensible, but all her resolve had disappeared right when he reappeared at her door a handful of days later. With shaking hands, she had made two mugs of coffee that they were never going to drink. Within minutes, his hands had been on the back of her neck and up under her hair, and her back had been pressed against the fridge. Somehow, then, his hand on the inside of her thigh, and then his fingers inside her.

Karen had made a terrible, revealing noise; sharp and high, ripped out of her. Overexcited. Frank had hardly needed to move. His thumb on her clit; she had done the rest, rocking against him. Their eyes screwed closed and their foreheads pressed together. Later, Karen would remember hiking her right leg up over his hip and clinging to his biceps with each hand, trying not to slide down his body to the floor on weak, weak legs. An embarrassing display.

At no point had Frank made a move to touch himself, but he had been hard against her hip and his upper lip had been sweating. And afterwards he had apologised— _apologised_ —and left, without leaving a phone number. He hadn’t left for long, but when he’d come back, Karen had chewed him out. Demanded a way to contact him. Really lost her shit. It had been a fair point; even Frank had conceded that. So what if it made her look kind of crazy? Her life had become kind of crazy, and Frank was a primary contributor to the craziness. 

All that waiting around for him, seeing him only on his terms. She told him, straight up: _I’m not a goddamn fantasy princess that you can keep in a tower. You don’t get to come and go as you please._

So maybe he deserved what he was about to get, just a little. 

When his kisses were getting loose and long, Karen pulled away. His hand was still resting on her chest. She slid it up to her throat. Frank watched, his mouth wet and open. 

‘Do it, Frank,’ she said, low.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m asking you to.’ Karen paused, figuring out exactly where to slip the knife in. ‘Don’t you like giving me what I want?’

‘Karen,’ he said, his voice strangled. ‘It’s not right.’ Karen propped herself up on her elbows and kissed his neck right under his ear. 

‘You’re hard right now,’ she said. She pressed her thigh against his cock. ‘The idea gets you hot.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ 

‘Come on, Frank,’ she said, taunting him. ‘It’s a little late to pretend to be a choir boy.’ Frank tentatively touched two fingers to her throat, and Karen’s body sparked like a live wire.

‘That’s your hyoid bone,’ he said. ‘Fragile.’ He licked his top lip. ‘Larynx.’ He put his thumb and index fingers under her ears. ‘Carotid arteries.’ 

‘Now you’re just teasing me,’ Karen said. Her blood rushed in her ears. She imagined him as a hostile interviewee and showed her teeth. ‘Least you could do is get me off.’

‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

Karen gathered herself before going on for the kill. ‘You’ve hurt me before.’

‘Never meant to.’

‘Make it up to me,’ Karen said.

‘Fuck,’ Frank cursed. He wet his lips with his tongue. ‘Could make it up to you in a nicer way.’

‘But you’re not a nice man.’ Frank’s breath caught with an audible click. Karen got it. She did. All those hours in the hospital room and the courtroom, protesting for him when he couldn’t, wouldn’t. And Frank, protesting back that he wasn’t worth the effort, that he didn’t deserve the care. Sure, Karen was a bleeding heart. She’d do it all over again. But she’d seen so much, between then and now. It was hard to care about moral absolutes. It was hard to indulge him in the same way anymore. Her pedestal was no more comfortable than his gutter. ‘You wanna argue?’ Karen asked.

‘Can’t argue with that.’ His thumb stroked down the side of her throat. Karen fought to stop her eyes from rolling back in her head.

She wanted to tease more, but there was something tenuous stretching between them that could snap at any moment. The backlash was going to sting. Karen opted for the controlled break.

‘I’ve _been_ hurt, Frank. Over and over again, in ways I couldn’t control. I hurt other people, and I couldn’t stop myself then either. I can control this. And I want it.’ 

Frank’s jaw rippled, and his mouth did something that Karen considered unfairly sinful. She could see him processing, hovering above her in the dim circle of light. 

‘Okay,’ he said slowly, shaping the word with care. His voice had dropped lower and was thick and warm. Moving deliberately, he brought his elbow down next to her, his body in low and almost touching her. The press of his right hand on her throat was light, so light; just barely there, but the weight of his palm was enough. 

Karen’s next breath rattled out of her. 

‘God, Frank,’ she said. Already her body was melting into the mattress in a pool of terrible heat. Frank’s cock was a distracting presence against her inner thigh. It was just the head of it, a little wet, but she wanted it. A lift of her hips; Frank moved away. The resolute set of his jaw was back. His eyes were fixed on her face. It didn’t take a reporter to be able to read him. He was making sure, Karen knew. He was making absolutely sure she wanted it.

Karen, too fair-skinned to hide anything, knew her face was red. Too gone on Frank Castle to hide anything from him these days. He clocked it, shifted his weight and pushed her right thigh open with his knee. Karen sucked in an excited little breath. In a small corner of her mind that was still functioning, she wondered if he still thought about fingering her in her kitchen—about the noises she had made. Even the thought of it was hotly embarrassing to her. Karen felt like Frank could pick the memory out of her mind. Something in her face must have shifted, because finally Frank was all the way hard against her, and he smiled. A sharky one, showing his teeth.

‘Last chance to tap out early, Page.’

‘Never,’ said Karen, with a laugh in her voice. And Frank chuckled, and in a long, easy stroke he lined himself up and pushed into her. ‘Oh my God,’ she said against the firm pressure of his hand. Not enough to damage, but her lizard brain didn’t know or care. ‘Frank—’

So her body wasn’t all the way ready for him. Karen didn’t care. His cock dragged its way into her and she felt herself break out into a sweat. He let out a shuddering breath as if he were the one with a hand around his throat. He stopped moving. A heel in the back of his thigh started him up again.

‘Come on,’ Karen told him, swallowing against his rough palm, loving the movement of his thumb down the side of her neck. Frank’s free hand came up to cradle her head. He fucked her slowly but deeply, pressing his open mouth to her hairline, her forehead, her jaw. The pressure on her throat never wavered. 

Karen grabbed the back of Frank’s arm, fingers digging in as she rode the fine line between too much and, somehow, not quite enough. At any moment, he could lean on her and crush her throat. He still smelled like leather and cordite. It would be easy for him to damage her. His stubble scraped her skin, making her shiver. He had killed hundreds of people. Karen closed her eyes and moaned through gritted teeth. She was safer with him than with anyone else. He was fucking her so inexorably, so deeply, that it was almost painful. When she clenched down on him, his groan reverberated through her chest cavity. The FBI’s most wanted man, she reminded herself, and she hadn’t even bothered to make him wear a condom.

‘Is this what you wanted?’ Frank asked against her cheekbone. 

‘Yes,’ Karen said in a quick exhalation. ‘Frank, yes.’ When had she hiked both her legs up around his hips? She held on. He was nailing the angle. ‘Don’t stop,’ she told him desperately, hoping to God he didn’t decide to switch it up now. Frank, always dependable, didn’t stop. Didn’t even move her hand, which was digging into the meat of his forearm. 

His hand was starting to sweat against her throat, sliding a little with each thrust. He had his thumb and forefinger tucked under her jaw, tilting her head back. It made her think hazily of a predator exposing a rabbit’s soft underbelly. Or of the scratch of his unshaven face on her inner thigh. Delicate things, opened up. Karen wished it were possible to spread her legs wider for him. She wanted to give him more, somehow. Or perhaps she wanted more. 

‘Please,’ she tried, through the ragged sound of her own breaths. Frank made a desperate sound. Not above being manipulative, Karen turned her face a little so he could feel her mouth against his cheek. ‘Frank, please.’ His breathing stuttered out of rhythm and his fingers twitched on her throat. He was grinding into her, his weight pressing on her clit. 

‘You keep that up, I’m gonna come,’ Frank managed.

‘Do it,’ Karen said, her cunt starting to throb. She was clinging to him, her thighs trembling. Her throat was raw from breathing, and from sleeplessness; she sucked in air around Frank’s hand, desperate. She wanted to come. She was chasing it. She wanted to hear him come. Keeping herself on the edge was agony. Karen managed to hold out until she felt Frank’s thrusts get sloppy and then she tightened up on him and whimpered through an endless wave of pleasure. Somewhere in the sweaty mess of it, Frank was coming. Coming inside her, she reminded himself, feeling it with an elemental sort of satisfaction. 

Frank’s hand slid away from her throat and joined its partner in her hair. Making up for it, he kissed her neck, her ear, the little dip between her collarbones. Right up under her jaw. He was still inside her. They were rocking against each other in the aftershocks, shivery and good and slick with sweat and come. 

‘It’s like that for you, huh?’ Frank asked a few minutes later, lying half on top of her.

‘It’s like that,’ Karen said, smiling at him just in case he was still going to have inconvenient emotions. He turned his head, nuzzled at her hair. His big hand was back on her heart again; it moved with each heartbeat. ‘But if you wanted to do it in the kitchen again…’

Frank made a sex noise and buried his face in the pillow. Karen laughed at him. He came back up for air.

‘Could do pretty much whatever you wanted,’ he said, suddenly serious.

So he smelled like cordite and leather and hours-old blood. He was held together by scars and black coffee and grit and was, potentially, the most dangerous man in the contiguous United States and beyond. But he had never lied about any of that to Karen, and she had the bone-deep proof that she could trust him. 

‘Is that on the record, Mr Castle?’

‘You can quote me,’ Frank said.


End file.
